Nesta CMS

A Ruby CMS. Built with Sinatra.

Quick start

Nesta is written in Ruby, and you'll need a copy of Ruby installed in
order to use it. Ruby comes pre-installed on Apple Macs and is available
for Linux. It's easy to install, but if you'd like a bit of extra help
have a read through our article on Installing Nesta with RVM.

These instructions have been written for people using Linux or a Mac.
If you're using Windows you'll need to substitute mr-sparkle for rackup
as mr-sparkle doesn't run on Windows.

When setting up a typical CMS you install it on your server, then use
your browser to login via the admin interface in order to start editing
your content and designing your layout. Nesta is different; you get a
copy of your site running on your own computer first, and then
deploy to a web server when it's ready. So let's get
on with installing it on your computer...

Installation

Begin by using the gem command to install Nesta and Bundler
(don't type the $ characters; they represent your command prompt):

$ gem install bundler
$ gem install nesta

Create a new folder to contain your new website (in this example the
folder will be called mysite.com, but you can call it anything you
like):

$ nesta new mysite.com

If you intend to use git to version your changes, add the --git
switch:

$ nesta new mysite.com --git
$ cd mysite.com
$ bundle

If you were to start Nesta up now you'd have a working web site, without
any content. That's no fun -- let's get something to read.

The demo site

Nesta comes with a small demo site that you can have a play with to get
yourself going. It's stored in a Git repository (so you'll need git
installed). Install it into your project with:

$ cd mysite.com
$ nesta demo:content

The site will be downloaded into the content-demo folder.

Browse your new website

Now what?

You can experiment by editing the files in the content-demo/pages
folder. When you're ready to start on your own site you'll be better off
if you leave the content-demo folder behind and make your pages in the
content folder. You'll also need to edit the config/config.yml file
to tell Nesta that it should be looking in content, rather than
content-demo.